I was about your age that night, in the third or fourth grade.

The house we lived in as awful. I don't believe in haunted houses but I'm telling you now that there was something wrong with that house, something evil. And while I don't believe in it now, I remember vividly what it was like to feel haunted in every room. We all saw things, things that the natural world can't explain. I'll probably never tell you about those things. I only bring it up because it's somewhat germane to what I'm about to tell you now.

Full disclosure before we start: My career is in international trade. The global economy isn't a mystery or source of anxiety for me; it's my livelihood and I love it. It's a complicated and constantly changing industry so it keeps me on my toes. It's challenging, requires a lot of critical thinking, reading, research, and, yes, creativity. In short, it suits me.

That being said, I don't have a strong opinion about free trade agreements in general. They don't make my job any easier- in fact, in order to get any benefit from a FTA, I have to do more work, not less. (We'll get to that shortly.) So, as I stated at the top, this will not be an argument for or against the TPP or FTAs. It's not an opinion piece.

The purpose of this series is purely educational. Many people are misinformed or completely uneducated about the topic and I hope to bring something to the table that will help others form an educated and informed opinion.

Okay, now that all of that's out of the way, let's do the jump and geek out on international trade.

In Part One we learned about how free trade agreements work, or don't work, as the case may be. Today we're going to talk about how FTAs are manipulated, and delve a bit deeper into trade statistics.

I'll also attempt to address in more detail some of the questions I was asked yesterday.

In Part One, we discussed how FTAs don't create a free for all between trade partners; there are provisions that each partner must work within, and many times trade between, for example, Canada, the United States, and Mexico will fall outside of the parameters of NAFTA.

But in Part Two we learned how that can sometimes (or even often) be manipulated, so that exporters obtain preferential treatment even when products don't (or shouldn't) fall within those parameters.

We learned in both part one and part two how some countries are able to negotiate much stronger standing than other partners in a FTA. (Mexico flooding the sugar market of North America to the detriment of Canada, for example.)

Before we do the jump, let's go over a few of the necessary notes and such:

First, I appreciate all of the positive feedback I've received, and I really appreciate the questions that I get in the comments section. That helps me understand my audience a bit more and attempt to address specific questions and concerns that some readers have.

That being said, I don't think I fully appreciated what a monster this project would be until I started writing it. In fact, this started as a single diary in December. Due to the many disruptions in my life around that time I had to temporarily abandon it. When I came back to revisit it, I realized that it would have to be a series or the longest blog post ever written. (I think I've passed the "TL;DR" threshold in each diary already, so I truly do appreciate those of you have stuck with me on this.)

So there are a lot of other points about FTAs that I wanted to address before we moved on to the TPP, but we're getting to the point where we don't have a lot of time left on this subject and I'm going to have to let those things be side-notes in subsequent diaries. (Whenever this happens, I'll still make myself available in the comment sections to further elaborate on any point that seems unclear.)

 And, finally, please keep in mind that as we venture on to the meat of the TPP that things might take a different tone. This is for a few reasons:

A) Where I don't have a strong opinion on FTAs in general, I do have one on the TPP. From this point on, we're going to be analyzing the TPP and I hope to keep my personal feelings out of it, but I can't promise that it will happen. Analyzing this for me means wearing a few different hats, so I apologize in advance if we veer from a "just the facts" series to a more opinionated piece.

B) Analyzing the TPP is going to be difficult given that I don't have a document to compare and contrast with previous trade agreements. Leaked documents and other reports are not the same as a final deal, so we'll all be fumbling in the dark on this point.

C) The main reason that I wanted to address the TPP is because it is not a traditional free trade agreement. That is also why I wanted all of you to have a better understanding of what a traditional free trade agreement consists of. We'll get into the hows and whys of how TPP differs from NAFTA, but the short version is: TPP goes well beyond simple trade and into much murkier waters.

This means that I can address in detail the trade part of the deal, but there are provisions that involve trade only tangentially and I am simply not qualified to analyze that with the rigor that I'd have with a compare and contrast to NAFTA and CAFTA. TPP is simply above and beyond that.

Alright, let's do the jump and understand the basics of TPP.

I really wanted to write about it because I saw that there were a lot of people that didn't understand some of the finer points of free trade agreements and they wanted to understand those before making a judgement.

It's become quite clear that no matter how I address the subject it simply won't be good enough. Thus ends the first and last time I've ever tried to educate kossacks on something that they might not be familiar with. To the people who do this day in and day out, my hat is off to you.

I've learned a few things from this little endeavor. Notably, no matter what one person writes about any given topic it will never be good enough. I'm okay with that, I'm just not going to continue to spend so much time on a topic that most people here don't give a fuck about and that is going to be turned into a political debate when there needn't be one.

For those of you who took the series in the spirit it was intended, please feel free contact me with any questions.

Free Trade is probably an important topic. I hope that someday someone meets your threshold for perfection before speaking of it.

SOLIDARITY!

International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 in the Bay Area will use its monthly stop-work meeting on Friday to idle the ports of Oakland and San Francisco to protest recent police killings of African Americans.

The executive board and membership of Local 10 aligned its “Union Action to Stop Police Killings of Black and Brown People” with International Workers’ Day, which is celebrated on May 1 in many countries.

While I've been hesitant to join in some of the more heated conversations about these topics of late, I have read with interest a few diaries and comment threads related to them. Forgive me for overgeneralizing, but I've found a common, even if minority, opinion among the left that identity politics are somehow secondary to the real issues that Americans face, and that identity politics somehow distracts us from that.

From where I stand this should be obviously and blatantly false, but I suppose I forget that if one is a member of the default American brand, it would be easy (although incredibly lazy) to view it through that prism. The fact is that identity politics and income inequality are, and always have been, inextricably linked.

Let's do the jump and discuss this topic with some clarity.

Offered without comment for your viewing pleasure:

Transcript below the fold.

I've had a pile of laundry in front of me all day long. It needs to be sorted and then washed and do you know how I'm dealing with that? I'm hanging out here, making comments that mean nothing.

I've often stated that if you see me here with regularity, that means I have a lot of shit to do in the real world and I don't want to fucking do it.

Some of the conversations I've had with folks IRL lead me to believe that many of us are the same. One of my kossack friends mentioned last week while we were one the phone, "it's always obvious when I have important shit to do, because that's when I'm most active on DK."

Is that true for you?

I know this is a stupid diary but I'm kind of interested in the responses anyway, and I never put polls in my diary but this seemed like a fun one to do.

I didn't mean to delete my last diary and I apologize for doing so. I've had a problem over the last month or so doing anything but comment here; everything has been done from my phone and navigating this site from a phone is nearly impossible at times. I've inadvertently deleted my last two diaries and I'm frustrated by it, too.

Again, my apologies and I'll probably just step away from posting until I'm able to do it from a laptop or something.

Sorry, everyone! I suck at phone blogging.

Last night I read a great diary titled Why I think Sandra Bland might have committed suicide, and I was a bit troubled by a few of the comments in the diary. I left a comment and thought about addressing my concerns in more detail with a diary, but it was late, it's a complicated topic, and I thought it would be best to leave it alone.

This morning I woke up to another really great diary about Sandra Bland which had the opposing view of the first. I disagree with the premise of the diary, but still think it's an excellently written piece that is worthy of your attention.

I urge you all to read both diaries and come to your own conclusions, if you haven't already.

But this diary isn't about Sandra Bland. It's about suicide in general and how we have a long way to go before we fully understand it.  

And I should probably add a few more exclamation points.

I can't improve upon what The Baculum King has already made so plainly clear. So let me just add to it a little bit:

WEAR YOUR FUCKING SEAT BELTS

WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?

One Saturday morning upon waking up, she entered the living room dramatically and I looked up from (probably) the comment I was making here to ask where she was hurting. Her eyes darted from many different parts of her body and finally, exasperated, she gestured with her hand from head to toe and cried "THE WHOLE THING!"

It was pathetic but funny, and of course I did the correct thing by having her sit down while I got her coffee. But I kept snickering throughout the day. "The whole thing!"

Since then, it's become an inside joke of ours. When something is overwhelming we never mention the word "overwhelmed;" instead, it's simply "the whole thing!"

And that's what life has been lately. Day after day, it's been the whole thing.

I thought about focusing on just one part of the thing for this diary, but then I thought, if I start listing my problems and forget one, that problem is going to feel left out and find a way to make sure I remember it next time. For the same reason that I never say "it can't get any worse," I will also not start acknowledging my problems. I'll just pop another muscle relaxer and pretend everything is right in my world.

Yeah, it's temporarily fun for us political junkies to watch the other party have a meltdown, but we need to think seriously about what Trump is doing to the national dialogue, and how we hurt ourselves in the long run when we support the extremists of the other party.

"Anchor babies" used to be a slur that was rarely heard outside of right wing hate radio, and now, thanks to Trump and the rest of the party trying to outdo him, it's a mainstream phrase. This isn't something that we should be cheering. Normalizing hate speech is dangerous; having a candidate give credibility to the hate-mongers is even worse.

We know, or should know by now, that rhetoric rarely stays in the realm of speech only. Rhetoric leads to actions, and the actions that we're already seeing from Trump supporters is scary; hoping it continues just so we can win an election is morally wrong.

That's my case for the moral side of the argument, but there's an electoral side of this, as well.

Please don't rec this diary, because I don't want attention drawn to it at this point.

Here's the sitch: our truck has been parked for a couple months because neither of us have been able to drive for reasons unrelated to this post. I knew it would take some work to get it started after sitting for so long so I've been putting it off, but circumstances have made it important that I get it running again. I tried yesterday with no success, so my FIL came home for lunch today and told me "let's get that truck runnin', kid."

A small fire, a lot of smoke, and a few panicked minutes later and the rig was purring.

I decided to take it for a drive to keep the battery charged and burn off the gas and oil that had coagulated around everything. When I got to the gas station to fill the tank I noticed a bullet in the bed. WTF? Weirder, I picked it up and freaked out a bit: written in sharpie on the bullet were the words "your mine" [sic].

My wife, nephew, and a number of my in-laws work in the hospitality industry. A majority of the staff in this particular establishment is made up of immigrants- like many places, the white folks work up front, the brown folks work behind the scenes, and the brown folks do the bulk of the work.

Literally, without them, the business would go under. They make this place what it is. They're the lifeblood of the company. The white faces are mostly just that- faces. They greet you, speak to you, etc, but they don't do most of the work.

No, it’s not perfect, but no version of DailyKos has been perfect.

I remember when DK4 rolled out, a lot of people claimed that they’d no longer participate. The uproar then was mostly about the addition of groups and followers: people feared that if they weren’t a member of groups or if they didn’t have enough followers, they wouldn’t be read. Off of the top of my head I remember two GBCWs (before those led to bannings) by people who knew they’d fade into obscurity when DK4 went live, and both of those diarists still regularly make the rec list. I’m not going to link to them now, but I’m sure others can attest to this happening.

The first day DK4 went live I went and followed a few people, then after a couple of weeks I quit following people, and I have no effin’ clue how many followers I have. I rarely, if ever, check my stream. I rarely, if ever, check how many followers I have. Because it doesn’t actually matter.

There are a few things that I don’t like about this iteration of DK. (I wish we could collapse sections like “most shared” because IDGAF what’s been shared the most, among other things.) And I do think the excessive white in the comment section is atrocious- it literally gave me a headache this morning.

But as a writer and reader, the upgrades are wonderful. As a commenter, they’re not so great. And while the comments do serve an important purpose for this site, they’re not what drives traffic. Kos has a job to do, and that’s to drive traffic here. The site is better looking if you’re not a regular reader and you just click on a link from facebook or some other site. That makes it more likely that a casual reader will come back for more content, and may eventually sign up. The tools that they have at their disposal now are much better (and more intuitive) than what we had when I signed up in DK3.

So, yes, there are problems, and yes, we should all take the worst of those problems to the help desk and hope for a response. But overall, the site looks nice and works well. And while in the past I’ve had my fair share of gripes about the responsiveness of the tech team, I think that right now they could use a little love. I know what it’s like to work on a massive project and only have the flaws pointed out, rather than a kudos for the progress that was made.

Oh, and for those of you who are threatening to leave:

UPDATE:

I’m going to bed, folks. Have a wonderful evening and don’t hold it against me that I don’t respond to or rec your comment. I’ll do one, both, or neither tomorrow morning. I’m off to fall asleep to some underground nineties punk rock that I finally tracked down online.

You know what peeves me? I mean, besides libertarianism, orange stuff that claims to be “cheese,” misplaced punctuations, and the inability to drop a draft diary into a group queue so that my betters can edit it for me? Besides those things, what really peeves me is that there is not a user here with the name Little Ann.

More on this in a second, but first, the obligatory word from our betters who could help me edit if I could save to the Top Comments queue sponsors:

Top Comments recognizes the previous day's Top Mojo and strives to promote each day's outstanding comments through nominations made by Kossacks like you. Please send comments (before 9:30pm ET) by email to topcomments@gmail.com or by our KosMail message board. Just click on the *Spinning Top™* to make a submission. Look for the Spinning Top™ to pop up in diaries posts around *Daily Kos.*

You know what happens after years of working cushy desk jobs, then finding yourself working two full-time labor jobs? You get really damn tired. More on this in a second, but first!

Top Comments recognizes the previous day's Top Mojo and strives to promote each day's outstanding comments through nominations made by Kossacks like you. Please send comments (before 9:30pm ET) by email to topcomments@gmail.com or by our KosMail message board. Just click on the *Spinning Top™* to make a submission. Look for the Spinning Top™ to pop up in diaries posts around *Daily Kos.*

The snow never stops falling here so it’s easy to be romantic about Winter, but I really, REALLY hate this time of year. In two days it’ll be one year to the day that my aunt died and I don’t know how to cope with that. I know I’ll call my cousins (if I can pay the fee to have my phone turned back on) and tell them that I love them, then call my own mother and be okay with how irritated she makes me because at least I have a mom.

It’s just hard to think that it’s been one year since my aunt died. My memories aren’t comfortable; at some point my cousin asked me to get my aunt’s phone from her room. I went in and gasped: her skin was green. Her eyes were taped shut. She was beyond dead, and as much as I wanted to grab that phone, I couldn’t walk over to other side of her bed. I stood paralyzed at this side of her bed and then whispered something to her.

Then I went outside and tore up a garden, kicking, screaming, wailing on the sidewalk.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

I remember the long drive home from Tacoma to Idaho thinking, “fuck it, next year will be better.” But this year hasn’t been better. It’s been bad- really bad. I’m not going to go into detail because I really don’t want to even think about it anymore. 

I’ll just say that my wife has a heart condition and this week, after all of the doctor visits and worries and blood pressure monitoring, we found out that the problem is an aneurysm.

In her heart.

My wife has an aneurysm in her heart.

I have the gift of words in my bag of tricks, but I have no words for this. I suppose I’ll just ask my readers to imagine hearing those words about their own spouse. “It’s an aneurysm.”

I have nothing to say in response. I’m sure you understand.